Stop Single Use Plastics!

The European Commission will support a campaign to raise awareness about the importance of reducing, reusing, and recycling plastics construction and demolition waste in the Turkish Cypriot community. The campaign aims to encourage individuals to reduce their single use plastics consumption for a cleaner environment as well as reducing, reusing and recycling construction and demolition waste.

The EU waste management policies aim to reduce the environmental and health impacts of waste and improve Europe’s resource efficiency. The long-term goal is to turn Europe into a recycling society, avoiding waste and using unavoidable waste as a resource wherever possible. Proper waste management is a key element in ensuring resource efficiency and the sustainable growth of European economies.

In January this year the European Commission launched the first-ever Europe-wide strategy on plastics as part of the transition towards a more circular economy. The key objectives include:

All plastic packaging on the EU market will be recyclable by 2030

Consumption of single-use plastics will be reduced

The intentional use of micro-plastics will be restricted

Improved waste management helps to reduce health and environmental problems, reduce greenhouse gas emissions (directly by cutting emissions from landfills and indirectly by recycling materials which would otherwise be mined or extracted and processed), and avoid negative impacts at local level such as landscape deterioration (due to landfilling), local water and air pollution, as well as littering.

The European Union's approach to waste management is based on the "waste hierarchy" which sets the following priority order when shaping waste policy and managing waste at the operational level: prevention, (preparing for) reuse, recycling, recovery and, as the least preferred option, disposal (which includes landfilling and incineration without energy recovery).